Remove the defiled wand ego

[donkatsu]

Being able to generate vim on demand breaks a fundamental mechanic of vim, the fact that you can't refill vim in between fights.

[Planetus]

Maybe just make them rare, or maybe even make it a single artifact, like Celia's heart. Souls have the same mechanic for a necromancer, but they work with that being bent through a hard quest.

[SageAcrin]

You can cast Bloodcasting with 0 Vim and generate it by shooting anything short of a boss in the face.

If you're down to 0 Vim vs a boss and don't have Bloodcasting leveled, nor any other way to gain Vim, a Defiled wand is not likely to save you, except in the sense that you can take hundreds upon hundreds of turns to slowly regain Vim.

I'm not objecting to this in theory, but is there any practical situation you can think of where this would actually improve Vim? Because I lugged around one on my Corruptor clear recently and literally never bothered to use it, outside of seeing that, yes, it did indeed work. It sounds good, but it really doesn't do much.

[PureQuestion]

the wand singlehandedly breaks the fact that you can't regain vim when there isn't anything around to kill. With a defiled wand, you can enter every single fight with full vim.

[SageAcrin]

Yeah, but you could have cast Bloodcasting, killed the first thing you saw, and then have enough Vim.

Or, you know...cast Fearscape on the first thing you saw.

Or used secondary abilities, like Channel Staff or Mind Sear. Unless it was extremely competent, it literally never would come up, and if you're really worried you can leave the area and go to a Farportal everywhere but High Peak.

The final area of High Peak has infinite enemy dispensors, and High Peak bosses will chase you if you run.

Oh, and I'm forgetting the important part where Drain costs 0. Silly me.

[Sirrocco]

Caveat: this is speaking as someone who has never played a vim class

SageAcrin... you seem to be saying that the ability to enter any fight you like with maxxed vim is not of significant utility to a Reaver/Corrupter, and/or that any moderately competent Reaver/Corrupter will always end fights on max vim with minimal effort, and therefore need not worry about such things. In essence, it seems that you're saying that the game would not be changed significantly (from a crunch standpoint) if vim simply regenerated (slowly) over time. Is this, in fact, what you're saying?

[bricks]

Generally the only time you'll be low on vim is after a long, unavoidable fight, or after a difficult fight like a boss, in which case it feels more like a gimped aspect of the class. (I think you should be able to regain Vim up to a certain percentage while resting, maybe as part of a talent. It would be a good replacement for Absorb Life.)

[SageAcrin]

Hmmm, that's an interesting question.

The impact on the earlygame would be more notable-Drain is not full at all until later, and not reliable to hit people with(due to range issues) the same way. L5 Drain is 9 Range, L1 is 5. An earlygame Corruptor with Vim Regen(or a wand) would notably have an advantage(albiet, the wand would be really annoying and time consuming relative to the regen) in some situations, though I struggle strongly to think of a situation where it would turn losses into wins.

You won't always end on maximum Vim either, which means that you may have to lead off with Drain in a conflict, or Bloodcasting. Not really a major deal, it just means you constantly have to remember Vim, rather than just letting it roll by its self.

But overall? Mmmm, I like the psychological impact Vim has right now, you have to think about it(tossing out Drain and having it fail to critical in battle very often means you won't be anywhere near full, and have to manage your next few spells), but regeneration wouldn't change that either.

All told, it would probably be safe to have natural Vim regen. It's less restrictive than Necrotic and Hate, and probably even Paradox, and has less reason to be heavily restrictive(as, if it was heavily restrictive, then the class would be extremely hard to play, and overall would probably be pretty bad at best. It's a pure damage class, constantly having to worry about resources would leave it in dangerous situations extremely fast, thanks to its relatively linear cannon playstyle.).

Edit: I would totally support a skill that gave you some level of natural Vim regeneration as a replacement for Absorb Life(wouldn't even have to change the name, just make it absorbing ambient life). It would make a useful earlygame skill, and a useful way to prevent nuisance issues lategame without actually being overly powerful. Would be hard to make a leveling justification for it, but.

[Parcae2]

If it's that useless, why is it in the game?

I can only imagine two scenarios here:

1. Nobody would ever use it. Therefore, it is worthless and should be removed.
2. It could potentially be useful because you want to have full vim all the time in a dangerous area or something. In that case, it breaks a fundamental class mechanic and should be removed.

EDIT: And I think it would be a very bad idea to add vim regen. Vim is stolen from others, not generated naturally. It may not make a huge change in gameplay but it does add some important flavor.

[SageAcrin]

...because it grants a small upside without being broken or necessary in any situation?

That's like saying Mana Regen either has to be massively important or useless and should be removed in either case. (Incidentally, there are Mana wands, too...)

Heck, if you're using something like Conjuration, that extra Vim you get may be enough to cast another powerful spell, when you don't have Drain handy. It's not really a big deal, but I can see uses for it.

Edit: I'm neutral enough on the Vim regen idea, I think. I would support almost anything replacing Absorb Life, and that would certainly fit well, but it's not a big deal to me.

[Parcae2]

Well, either it grants no benefit at all, or it grants benefits of a kind that the game should not allow. Either way, it's bad.

Personally, I think that all of the "gives resource on using" charms should be removed - they all provide bonuses too small to make any difference, so there's no point in having them around. But at least they don't make anything work in a way that it's not supposed to work.

Footnote: I also think that Celia's Heart is a bad idea, especially if souls gain more use in later betas - I hate the notion of a necromancer potentially resting for 750 turns to be at peak capacity for a boss fight. But it's so deliciously evil!

[PureQuestion]

the heart at least is precious because with each use it takes longer to recharge.

[SageAcrin]

I think the problem here is the "game shouldn't allow" part.

I'm personally fine with DarkGod changing his own plot ideas. If a wand can grant life energy or Positive/Negative energy through mysterious means, I'm good with it.

As to the Heart...ugh, I'd rather see Necrotic get a more flexible and less tedious (especially less tedious. My god that is tedious, using the Heart, and there are some situations where it is clear how relatively worse you are than most mages if you have no summons, so it's a very necessary thing to sit there and pump the Heart for a few souls sometimes...) way to restore it, not less ways. Necrotic is a huge issue late in the game, especially in the final battle. Having said that, if Necromancers started using Necrotic for more than summoning it could be a problem, sure.

Edit: I actually question the more turns part of the Heart. If someone really needs to milk the Heart to survive, they will. All it does is somehow make it even more annoying to do. If it was never necessary...but it actually kinda is, for the class, unlike the wands. There *aren't* always people around to outright kill, you *can't* just produce Necrotic at a battle start-even your bunnies, which is in an unlocked tree, have randomized odds to produce Necrotic, so you may cast a full power L5 Meek and get two, and obviously you *can't* leave High Peak. And you are in major trouble without support, lategame.

I kinda wish there was some more normal way to restore Necrotic, honestly, but it's so hard to balance. The Heart functioning as a very slow regen works, but 100+ cooldowns are, I thought, something the game was trying to get away from due to the tedium factor involved.

[Parcae2]

Heh, I didn't know that about the Heart. But it doesn't affect the point - if you put the player in a situation where he can rest for eight billion turns to get a significant leg up in his next battle, then you're making him choose between safe-but-boring and dangerous-but-less-boring. That's not a game mechanic that you want to see. (Fake edit: Or what Sages said).

And, thinking about it, there could be situations where the same "safe but boring" route could present itself for Corrupters too. Drain has a pretty long cooldown. If you're almost out of Vim, you could charge ahead into the next battle with the knowledge that you could find yourself out of Vim again and with Drain on cooldown, or you could wait for a zillion turns and be safer. Again, there should never be a situation where the possibility of boredom affects the player's decisions - that's why grinding was removed.

[SageAcrin]

There are few enough situations that require that of Vim, that I don't think it's likely that big of a deal.

Having said that, I do agree in principle. Having that be the only independent source of Vim bothers me a little too, when you put it that way. It's mostly a conceptual issue, but maybe the resource wands should, when it's reasonably logical, grant a small amount of regen for their healing category as well, so that people won't spam them forever out of battle.

Doesn't work for Negative/Positive/Hate(which have substantial systems built around their constant draining), but all the others it would be harmless for. (As to if the wands for those are useful...well, Negative yes, Positive probably not very but mostly would be there because lacking a Positive foil to Negative would look odd, and Hate is very useful just so you can squeeze out a vital skill for a Cursed that's had bad luck. At least, IIRC there's a Hate ego...)

Edit: Actually, on reflection, having Positive regen (or, rather, mitigate the drain) would probably be harmless enough. Negative is probably similar. You're using an equip slot for it, after all.